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Fairmont Sandwiches
Work a small cream cheese until smooth, using a wooden spoon, and season with salt. Chop red and green peppers separately and wring in cheese-cloth to remove some of the moisture. Mix one-half of the cheese with some of the red pepper, the other half the green pepper. Spread four thin slices of white bread sparingly with butter, on the lower slice spread the green pepper mixture, cover with another slice of bread, on top of that spread a layer of the red pepper mixture, cover with the third slice and spread that with the green pepper mixture. Cover with the fourth slice of bread. Fold in cheese-cloth and press under a weight, then cut in thin slices downward.
A layered ribbon sandwich built for slicing rather than eating out of hand. The success of it is entirely in the moisture control and the pressing.
- "A small cream cheese"This means one of the small packaged cakes of cream cheese sold at the time, probably around 3 ounces. Use full-fat block cheese, not the whipped tub kind, which is too loose to hold a layer.
- Which peppersRed and green here mean sweet bell peppers, or canned pimientos for the red; hot chilies are not intended. The colours are the whole point of the dish, so choose the brightest ones you can.
- The hinge: wring them dryChopped raw pepper releases a good deal of water, which will thin the cheese and dampen the bread. The recipe has you chop the peppers, then wring them in cheesecloth to remove some of the moisture; chop them fine and wring well so the layers slice cleanly.
- Butter is structuralThe thin film of butter acts as a moisture barrier between damp filling and crumb, and the recipe has you butter all four slices. Butter should be soft enough to spread without tearing thin bread.
- BreadA close-grained white sandwich loaf, cut thin; a day-old loaf is easier to cut thin. Very fresh bread can compress under the weight.
- PressingWrap in cheesecloth and set a plate and a modest weight on top. The recipe gives no weight or time; chilling it in the refrigerator firms the cheese so the downward cut gives clean stripes.
- CuttingSlice down through the four layers with a long thin knife wiped between cuts. The recipe asks for thin slices; cut them thick enough to hold together.
- YieldOne four-slice stack gives a handful of ribbon sandwiches, depending on how thin they are cut. Scale by making more stacks.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) collected several hundred small fancy sandwiches at a moment when the sandwich was becoming a fixture of the ladies' luncheon and the afternoon tea table, and many of its recipes carry hotel and club names. The Fairmont in San Francisco, which opened in 1907 — the building survived the 1906 earthquake but was gutted by the fire before it could open — is a plausible namesake, though Fuller gives no attribution beyond the title. The ribbon sandwich depends on fine-grained white bread cut thin and on packaged cream cheese: layered, pressed, chilled and cut to show its stripes, it was made to be looked at as much as eaten, and the red-and-green pairing gave a kitchen two colours from one bowl of cheese.